Eva Mendes on the Mar. 28 Cover of Backstage!

The lovely Eva Mendes graces our March 28 cover! Here's a little sneak peek of the cover story, where Mendes talks about her latest film, "The Place Beyond the Pines."

In “The Place Beyond the Pines,” Eva Mendes must age from mid-20s to early 40s. She employed various “tricks,” such as undergarments that made her hold her body in a different way, but then she took a more drastic approach.

“I wanted to come from a place of pain and tragedy and what that does to a person,” she says. “But then one night, in the middle of the night at the Holiday Inn in Schenectady, I decided I would shave my eyebrows almost completely off. I thought, What if she had this nervousness about her, and she’s constantly picking and picking and picking?”

Along with graying her hair, she says a few makeup tricks were tried as well, “but when I shaved my eyebrows almost off, that changed the shape of my face. I wanted to make sure that time, that tragedy, had its way with her and she mostly looked exhausted more than anything. For me, that was the funnest part of the character.”